Good neighbors

Many blogs and articles talk of building a good community for the coming hard times. Getting to know your neighbors, visiting and perhaps working together. In hard times neighbors can provide skills you don't have. You may have skills they don't. Sharing chores, sharing food, sharing protection for all. Sure makes sense but it can be harder for some than others.

We live on a little acreage and most people in our area to do. No close neighbors really. Those along the river are much closer together than us on the land side. My hubby, due to his drinking, has slowly closed himself off from just about everyone. I have my family and a few friends. I make acquaintances fine but friends are different. I always have a few and they are good friends. Unfortunately, they live all over the place, none very close.

I start this blog this way because I want to talk about one neighbor in particular. They are really the only neighbors we socialize with and not very often at that. They were the first neighbors we met while the house was being built, walking up our long driveway one day to see how it was going. Far, far too far to walk from their house to ours on the roads. When he rebuilt his pasture fence he put a man-gate in it and when we built our fence we put one in across from his. There is a bit of land between the two fences that belongs to yet another neighbor. We walk across it, and we are all but there. Saves time and leg muscles.

This neighbor, let's call him Scott, has always been a help. He loaned his tractor to clear out blackberries when we first moved in - we were doing it by hand. When animals got out of the fence he tracked them down and put them back. He hunted moles for us when they began to overwhelm us. Gave advice. Plowed my garden every spring. Shared his hay when weather was awful and I ran out. We often yacked with each other with weather was good and we were both out doing chores. Good neighbor.

We've had some tough times for almost two years now. Economic. I've explained before. I had to put the house up for sale and I told them before I told anyone else. He hated to hear it, hated to have to see us go, he said. Well, the house didn't sell and we've hung on. Barely perhaps, but we've hung one. No money to go into savings though and I knew we were going to have to have our long gravel driveway graded this year.

We do this every year but last year I didn't have the funds. Price kept going up and the year prior it had been about $1300, grading, 2 loads of rock and rolled. Boy, it was bad thru last winter and, of course, just kept getting worse. It had to be done this year or no one was going to make it up the driveway at all. Scott had told me to call him when I was ready to have it done and he could give me some local name to call for bids. I was very worried that I didn't have enough money and then what was I going to do? It really needed to be graded.

Once the rain sets in it's time to have it graded. I called Scott. He really wanted more info on how bad it was, how hard it was packed. Then he tells me he'll be over on Thursday with his tractor to see if he could grade it. I didn't think so. It was bad and packed hard. He wanted to look at it anyway so I agreed to wait until he had at it.

My hubby told me that Scott worked on it for about two hours. It's not bad at all. It's not as good as it would have been had the big graders worked on it, but it's not bad. I think we can make it thru the winter. I called Scott to thank him and he told me he'd hit it again when it started to get back again, no problems. Refused any payment, said it was no problem. After I hung up, my hubby told me that he and Scott spoke a bit before Scott headed home. Scott wanted to know what hubby thought and asked if we'd be staying now.

I'm going to go over tomorrow with a bottle of wine that I know they like. Seems very little as a thank you. I was so worried about that darn driveway. It's such a relief. Maybe nothing to him but so much to me. How can one have a better neighbor?